Nightclubs, drugs, prostitution and assault were only a few of the subjects of the Sneaky Spy's thoughts, as he walked along one of the tranquil streets of Wahroonga. It was sometime between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, he knew, having glanced at his watch before he set out on a brief walk around his home suburb.

"Nightclubs, prostitution, drugs, assault and many other things tend to make up the night life of Kings Cross," thought the Sneaky Spy, "The most innocent of them all might appear to be the nightclub element... if the chances of admiring the fashions of the star performers weren't nullified by the complete absence of those fashions. Yet what God refuses to sanction is taken as normal and acceptable by the law. Well I think that a night at the Cross would prove to be sufficiently full of action for the Sneaky Spy."

He spent the afternoon playing chess with his computer opponent, and then showered and shaved, before loading his pockets with an assortment of pens which were not pens. He concealed a few other small objects on his person, having dressed in black trousers, a double breasted black jacket with white pin stripes, an indigo cravat with white paisley lines and a white shirt.

He enjoyed his home cooked dinner of chicken and fried rice, and then caught two trains in succession, changing at Wynyard, which saw him arrive at Kings Cross station. Walking along the Kings Cross Road, he soon encountered one of those nightclubs which had plagued his thoughts earlier that day.

"Would you like to come in and see the show?" offered the wearer of a dinner suit.

"No decent minded God fearing Christian would ever sentence his eyes to the unholy spectacle you've got in there," said the Sneaky Spy, as two passers by turned their heads, having noticed his brazen insolence. At positions just beyond the cufflinks of a dinner jacket, two strong hands gripped the Sneaky Spy's double breasted jacket.

"You're bad for business, buster!"

"Am I really?" interjected the Sneaky Spy, looking hurt, "Then I must have achieved something."

"Yes. You're causing a stir."

There were two noticeable instants worth mentioning at this point in the story; and they were chronologically adjacent to each other. In the first instant, the Sneaky Spy's ridge hand (the edge of his hand on his thumb's side) was still beside his body. In the next instant the ridge hand was connecting with the temple of the doorman. After the passing of these two instants, Percy simultaneously shoved the man's upper body backwards, while reaping his right leg out from under him. The shoulder of the dinner suit collided with the footpath in a manner which jarred the pelvis of its wearer.

The Sneaky Spy continued his walk as if nothing had happened to disturb it. In a quieter part of the street he saw a girl who could have been no more than twenty years of age. She could only have been preparing to solicit one sort of business. A strange chill came over the Sneaky Spy, as he saw her client walking away with her.

What could he do?

People in such occupations lived desperate empty lives. Often their entry into poverty was no fault of their own. Even their familiarity with an environment such as Kings Cross might have been attributed to the influences of parasites, pimps and drug merchants. For several hundred dollars each week, people could become so engrossed in the effects of heroin, that they could forget their troubles. Those hundreds of dollars could not be produced in the conventional ways of earning money, and the Sneaky Spy reflected that the world's oldest profession was also perhaps its saddest.

Percy Dale could perform astounding feats of stealth in the dark, even on a dimly lit street. To the untrained eye - and even to many of the trained eyes - he was merely an insignificant portion of Sydney's night life. To himself, he was a frustrated onlooker, frustrated, because he knew that following the new and temporary pair back to an apartment or townhouse would not enable him to interfere. As he shadowed their movements mechanically, resigning himself to the futility of what he was doing, he thought back to the days of his childhood. Those were days of playing with toys, friends and neighbours; and days of rushing through his homework so that he could enjoy the evening in the innocent ways that a child enjoys an evening.

Why could it not have gone on like that?

Why did these awful things happen, which prevented a person's adulthood from being nothing more than an advanced childhood?
He saw the two of them enter a small house with two stories - and probably at least as many tenants - after they had turned back around into Bayswater Road.

"And that ends the party for now," he thought, "I am not supposed to disturb the evening."

Reluctantly he walked past the house and saw a young boy walking along the footpath towards him. Percy was able to win a child's trust with a minimum of effort, and the smile that he showed the lad was no exception.

"Isn't it a bit late for you to be away from home?" he asked.

"I'm not," said the boy, "That's my home there."

He pointed to the house where the girl and her client had gone.

"What's your name?" he asked the lad.

"Samuel."

"Well I'm Percy, and I just wonder why you're not safely inside, in bed."

"My big sister brings...visitors home. She doesn't mind if I go out at night time."
"But it's ten o'clock. What about your parents?"

"They're not still alive. My sister looks after me," said the boy.

"My parents aren't alive either," said Percy gently, "but when do these visitors go home?"

"Sometimes they stay all night. So I just go in and tuck myself into bed."

"Do you get enough sleep for school?"

"I don't go to school. My sister looks after me at home."
"So why do you like to go out at night?"

"To find some friends. There's not much to do on my own."

"I'll be your friend, if you like," said the Sneaky Spy, as the Percy Dale within him fought back an army of approaching tears, with at least a temporary claim to victory.

"Thanks. Would you like to come in and play cards?"

"What about the visitors?" asked Percy, knowing of only one.

"We can go into my room."

"Well alright. We'll play cards for a while, if you promise to go to bed when we've finished," said Percy.

The boy agreed and led the Sneaky Spy into his room. For a while they played fish, switch and gin rummy, until Percy insisted that eleven o'clock was definitely time for them both to go to sleep.

"Please don't go," said Samuel frantically, "My sister doesn't love me in the mornings, only in the afternoons. Can't you stay until morning?"

"Why doesn't she love you in the mornings? How do you know?"

"She's weird in the mornings. She...," and the boy went on to describe in the language of a primary school child the impressions that his sister gave in the mornings. Percy recognised the signs of a drug addict and raged inwardly.

"Alright Samuel," he said quietly, "I'll stay."

The boy produced a spare pillow. Percy put it on the end of a couch in the room and slept the night off, until an angry female voice woke him.

"What's this man here for, Samuel?"

"I asked him to stay," said the boy.

"He was rather lonely," said Percy, "Do you mind if I talk to you?"
"Alright. In my room. Samuel, you go and get your breakfast."

She led the Sneaky Spy into her bedroom.

"I'm glad to see that your customer left the place tidy when he left," said Percy.

"That's my business."

"As is your dope addiction, I'm sure."

"I'm not an-"

"Addict? Why not? Because you haven't gotten around to injecting this morning's round into your system yet," said Percy in a voice that was firm but too soft for the boy to overhear.

"I didn't invite you into my house."

"Your house?"

"Downstairs is mine. I pay rent here."

"Yes. I saw the beginnings of your effort to earn this week's payment. I'm sure it's also needed to pay off something else, an awful something else which leaves a boy of ..."

"Nine," she offered testily.

"Nine trying to fathom the dichotomy of sisterly attitudes towards him, because she's too doped up to love him in the mornings. What happened to your parents?"

"They ... knew things that they shouldn't have known. The drug lords got them. I was only fourteen then, and Samuel was an infant. They didn't bother with us. Can't you see that it's too much for me to do all this myself? At least this way I can forget it for a few hours a day."

"At what horrific cost? Do you think God created you, to have you do that to yourself every night and this every morning?"
"Do you think I wanted to have things this way? I was just offered a chance to try some for free,  then a bit more. Soon I was addicted. It's been several months now."

Percy felt a bitter defeat close at hand. The very subject of prostitution was one which he would have given anything to have locked permanently out of the private concerns of his mind; but there was no avoiding it this time. Maybe the girl would lead herself to the end of the road to ruin, but it could not be allowed to happen to the boy. He would state his intentions to her immediately, but a conflict would soon eventuate between the Sneaky Spy and Samuel's sister.

"What's your name?"

"Eleanor."

"Well Eleanor, why not break your habit? I can get professional help for you, and protection too, if you're worried about the pushers whom you have been financing."

"I can't give up. Who's going to feed the boy?"

"I can take him to an orphanage, at least until you're over some of this."

"You can't. Now leave me in peace. I have to pay again tomorrow, or I won't get more of the stuff."

"I'm going to wipe out your suppliers. Your wisest option is to get away before you go down with them. You can stay here if you like, but the boy won't be with you."
"You're not taking him away. You've no right to."

"I've no right to leave him here, with no school, no future, and your unholy activity going on under his very same roof every night. Would you like to telephone the police, explain this entire situation, and ask them to prevent me from finding a new home for Samuel?"

The girl stared silently at him, struggling with a tornado of terrifying thoughts, which battled within her mind, all competing for the position of first priority.

Percy felt cold, cruel and objective. He regretted the circumstances, but not his choice of action. The alternative promised the worst of existences for Samuel as time went on.

"What does this matter to you?" she sobbed, "What is your angle in this?"

"It matters, because I am opposed to the things I see in this wretched hybrid suburb of yours, where some dine in fine restaurants at the foot of luxurious hotels, pretending to be oblivious to strip shows, street kids, soliciting, alcohol abuse and the needle. Those with power entertain the snobbish refusal to support these ventures, and yet they don't lift a finger to take these rackets apart. Millionaires and homeless children, all taking in the same city lights, are unable to work together to put the mess right. My angle, young Eleanor, is terror. Oh, I have a Christian message for the walking weed carrier who supplies your morning amusement package, but we both know that before he'll hear my message, I'll have to heave him onto the pavement and step on his overstuffed tum tum. You may have read something about me in those days when I gained more fame than I would have preferred. I am unofficially known as the Sneaky Spy."
The mention of the name might well have deposited a whole hive of bees in her ears.

"The Sneaky Spy!...So it was you who…."